Wednesday, 24 July 2013

As featured in a previous post, I made death caps and arsenic cake for my Mad Tea Party. Now I'm going to reveal the recipes.

Death caps are made of eggs, covered with a carved tomato. The instruction said one should use mayonnaise to make them stick together and make the little white spots on top, but I forgot to buy it, so I just used pieces of cocktail sticks. I broke one in half and it kept the death cap in fine condition.

The middle layer

The arsenic cake is a lemon cheesecake-ish variation I made. To make it one needs a packet of some cookies (200g) and butter (100g or something), to mix and make the bottom part. One just crushes the cookies and melts the butter, mixes them and makes a flat layer in the baking tin.

Then 2 deciliters of whipped cream (before the whipping part) and two packs (2dl) of fromage frais / curd (do not know the terminology of baking in English) of lemon or another flavor one might prefer. and 4 leafs of gelatin. And of coarse, to make that beautiful color of imaginary arsenic, green food color.

Candy worms

Not for least, I added some worm-shaped candy at the bottom. The maggoty wine gum tasted really nice. On top I added some skull-shaped candy too.

It is quite possible I added some freshly squished lemon juice in it too, but can't remember. But I did squish three lemons to make the darker green topping for the cake, and there I added some sugar and a lot more of the green color. I used about 5 gelatin leafs to it. Unfortunately the baking tin I used was one of those you can remove the bottom, so of coarse liquid like the topping just run down and on the table. -_- Luckily a part of it remained, so the cake was not completely ruined.

Cake, before the topping started to run away on the table.

Now, my main point with this post is, that if one has a basic recipe for something, one can alter it to be more gothic or to be suitable for a theme party. My basic recipe is the cookie bottom and the whipped cream + curd + gelatin. After that everything else is optional.

There is plenty of green color left over after this party, so I am planning on a next opportunity to use it. At the moment the party idea is something like "Decadence <3 Absinthe: Grab your top hat and hide a bottle of the Green Fairy in your pocket and join the frantic rampage on the edge of degradation!"

Saturday, 13 July 2013

This is a magical day indeed! A wonderful lady Vanessa from A Fanciful Twist is hosting her sixth annual Mad Tea Party. Tea and Alice in Wonderland are delightful things, even if it might be rather a jaded era we are living here. More accustomed are we with Edgar Allan Poe and his grim tales, so with a dash of The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart of Poe mixed with Alice's Adventures from Carroll I sent some invitations to my dear friends.

You are cordially invited to Mad Tea Party

Please join me and enjoy

Tea, hot and sweet as Death

and Tender Arsenic Cake

with some Luscious Death Caps

So many friends came, some grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

But alas, poor March Hare was not his talkative self that day!

Many a young lady was wearing the fashionable color.

Other details of ornaments were too beautiful!

Tea was indeed sweet and hot, so warm golden color and velvety feel on one's tongue!

My dear guests were delighted with a new experience of Arsenic, the lemon-like freshness of poisonous delicacy! It was almost half eaten before I had the chance to exclaim "Off with their heads!"

Tea time passed, but Madness continued, so we opened a nice bottle of wine.

Evening proceeded pleasantly and later, when everyone had had their death cap, we became a bit dandy and decided to gamble a bit.

So off I went to fetch a game called Biribi, a lotto-like French game from the 18th century.

Oh, the excitement! Winnings and losings were grand, but the rivals stayed benevolent towards each other.

We had such a nice little tea party, we did not stop to look at the time. Finally my old clock started to feel abandoned!

So, with Lady Time irritated, we had to end our Mad Tea Party. With some good luck, we might get her on good humor again, hopefully before next year's Mad Tea Party!

•Link back to the person who tagged you.
•Tag 5 blogs with less than 200 followers.
•Get them to tag more bloggers and keep this thing going.

5 things you need every day:

1 A morning coffee, sipped in solitude.
2 A bra. My breasts are large, so it actually hurts, if I walk around without something supportive.
3 Something to make me laugh. A book, a picture, a friends status update.
4 A mirror. I am slightly ashamed to admit this, but I am really vain.
5 Dancing. I have this tendency to make dance-like moves, sometimes even when there is no music.

5 books you would recommend:

1 A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen This is a play, but I have read it and loved it. The play was critical about 19th century marriage norms and it is still interesting to reflect Ibsen's play to our present society.

2 On Blondes by Joanna Pitman. This is a non-fiction about the history of blondes and how the Western civilization has been obsessed about them from the ancient Greek to Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. It is greatly written and a real eye-opener about our culture and also about some things of the WWII.

3 The Wolf's Bride by Aino Kallas. It is a Finnish-Estonian werewolf story. Kallas wrote it 1928, but the story is situated in the 17th century. A really good story and it was translated in English soon after it was published so it might even be found if somebody is interested.

4 Hell Hath No Fury by Ingrid Noll. A wonderful, slightly twisted book about a woman's obsession and how that obsession turns into murder. Or two. Or more. Also Noll's Head Count is great, with two lovely ladies who know how to seize the moment and dispose a body. I've read those two books a dozen times.

5 Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. A wonderful novella that contains a huge amount of Greek mythology and love for beauty and youth.

5 materialistic wishes for Christmas presents:

1 A pinstripe jacket that would actually fit well.
2 A flight to Paris, October 2014.
3 A whole lot of contact lenses in different colours.
4 New wigs, blue and white and purple seem good at the moment.
5 A collector edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

5 places you wish to visit:

1 Paris, and I shall do it soon. I've even studied the language!
2 Budapest. Not planned as long as a trip to France.
3 Some distant paradise island in Borneo or some other place. I want time, leisure and solitude. And colourful drinks and fruits!
4 Great Rift Valley of Africa. I saw a series of documentary about it and it's biodiversity and I was sold. There are so many things to see! Of coarse that trip would take several months but this is about dreaming, isn't it?
5 Lapland. I want to experience a night that lasts for months.

5 Adjectives that describe you:

1 Witty
2 Bubbly (with laughter, there is a fine line between amusement and hysteria.)
3 Tired, but I am working my way out of that situation. I used to be exhausted.
4 Mischievous (in the most positive way.)
5 Pretty and sometimes even beautiful.

5 things you'd say to people about life:

1 I consider life to be stories one tells to oneself and those stories are constantly transforming and blending with other stories. Therefore all other four things about life are quotes from stories other than my life.

2 It is wrong to mess with people's hearts. Unless you are a licensed professional.

This time I am going to tell you about an exhibition in Finland's capital Helsinki. The exhibition is Happy End? is open 19.6.-25.8.2013 at Helsinki Art Museum Tennis Palace, which is situated in the center of the city next to a metro station. The theme of this exhibition is future and although all installations and other artwork in it do not count as "goth" on my standards, the theme and the whole ensemble together do please me and my need for gothic aesthetics.

In the little guide book of Happy End? were two choices. Either optimistic or pessimistic view on the exhibition. This is just my opinion but sometimes the optimistic point of view seemed a bit strained. For example a video installation Feast with King Midas by Timo Wright. In the little guide book it says "The video work is an interpretation on mortality and arrogance. --" And as an optimistic view there reads on small print at the end of the page "Food production is improved and there is enough healthy food for all". In the video a man sits with an empty plate in front of him and around him is plates full of delicious foods. Slowly all food is rotten away, but the man does not react, just sits. I know this sounds petty, but I do not see what food production has to do with it. Of coarse everybody can make their own interpretations about art but still. Otherwise I liked the video, it was delightfully creepy.

Half of the exhibition was about a Russian artist collective AES+F. The members deal in their work with ethics, ideology and history. Usually they mix modern pop culture to it and the result is like a hard candy. Really sweet, but it has a potentiality to make a cut on your tongue. In the exhibition there were statues and details on canvas of their work Last Riot which is about the post-apocalyptic vision of Hell combined to the video game playing generation. The video installation The Feast of Trimalchio could also be seen, but do to my train leaving, I did not have the chance to watch it till the end.

Personally I liked the pessimistic point of view in the exhibition and there was a great amount of morbid sense of humor in most works. I am actually going to visit the exhibition again because I really liked them and I did not have enough time last time to watch all videos in peace. A hint: the museum is free to everyone at the first Friday of every month.

Wednesday, 3 July 2013

Vanessa from A Fanciful Twist is hosting her 6th annual Mad Tea Party and I am sure many goths, among lolitas and others, will find that a happy and interesting blogging event. Besides, it is a nice way to cheer up ones private life with some good friends. I have already thought about my own tea party and what kind of gothic twist I am going to make, shall I offer my guests a maggoty cake or some death caps (made of non-lethal ingredients of coarse)? I shall tell my making of process with tips for gothing up a tea party in another post, shortly after the post about the actual party.

Come and join the fun, if you have time! Obviously it is not required to host the party in real life on that strict date, but the post about the party is to be made on 13th July.